German students ramp up fight against conscription

Bus stops are plastered with ads for a new YouTube series, ‘Generation military service’.

Walk around a city in Germany and you’ll see bus stops plastered with ads for a new YouTube series, “Generation Wehrdienst”—“Generation Military Service”. 

The series follows a number of new recruits as they work their way through basic training in the armed forces.

“It’s part of a big propaganda campaign that the state is pushing, to try to convince people, young people especially, to sign up for service,” Ueli, a school student in Siegen, in North Rhine-Westphalia, explained to Socialist Worker.

 “But it’s much bigger than this series. There are ads for the army in my school.

“And the military has been sending out leaflets to fast food restaurants as well. So, if you order a pizza, for example, you might get a leaflet asking if you want to sign up,” he added.

The German state, under the hard right Tory-type CDU/CSU government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, aims to increase the size of its military from 183,000 to 260,000 by 2035.

In addition, it wants 200,000 reservists.

It’s part of Merz’s pledge to make the German army, “the strongest conventional military force in Europe.”

But, there’s a problem with Merz’s plan. Almost no one wants to sign up.

Conscription, once compulsory, has been suspended since 2011. Instead, the state is trying to recruit people on a voluntary basis. 

Since the beginning of this year, every German male is now asked to complete a form indicating their willingness to serve.

So far, 99.82 percent have said they’d be unwilling to.

Euli said, “Students and young people are no longer identifying with the nation state, because it’s doing nothing for them.

“Schools, culture, sport and youth clubs are being shut down, because they say there’s no money. But they always find money for war.” 

Students and young people are not only refusing to serve, they’re resisting as well.

Euli is a member of the movement “Schulstreik gegen Wehrpflicht”—“School strike against conscription”.

Before the law for “voluntary conscription” had even passed through parliament, student activists had struck, walking out of school, on 5 December 2025.

Since then, there have been two further protests, on 5 March and 8 May 2026, with more than 50,000 students and their supporters taking part.

Germany’s school students walk out against war

  Read More

Schools in Germany might be out for the summer, but hundreds of members of “School strike against conscription” have been meeting to discuss next steps.

They’ve since called their next national demonstration, on 25 September.

And they’re pushing out, trying to build as big and broad a movement as possible.

So, for example, they’ve called on members of the movement to throw themselves into a day of action against the German state’s austerity and social spending cuts on the following day, 26 September.

For Euli, drawing trade unionists into the movement will be a crucial strategy. 

“The state has so far been spectacularly unsuccessful in hitting its targets.

“But, when the law was debated in parliament, there was a paragraph in it that would have required every male between the ages of 18 and 45 looking to leave Germany for longer than three months to ask for permission to do so.

“This wasn’t included in the final text of the law. But it could be, in future.

“So we have to say to workers that conscription won’t only affect students and young people, but everyone, eventually.

“We’ve been reaching out to local trade union branches, and so far the response has been encouraging. But we need to keep building.”